Ads create false needs that make us crave brand names and material possessions.
The validity of this criticism depends on how you define a “need.” If we believe that all consumers need is the basic functional benefits of products—the transportation a car provides, the nutrition we get from food, and the clean hair from a shampoo—then advertising may be guilty as charged. If, on the other hand, you think you need a car that projects a cool image, food that tastes fantastic, and a shampoo that
makes your hair shine and smell ever so nice, then advertising is just a vehicle that communicates those more intangible benefits.
Critics say that advertising makes us buy products that we don’t need—or even want—but that we think we must have. In his seminal book The Affluent Society, economist John Kenneth Galbraith portrayed advertising as “manipulating the public by creating artificial needs and wants.” [19] He charged that radio and TV manipulate the masses. His view was that ads created new desires, encouraging consumers to spend their scarce resources buying highly advertised products rather than on basic items that fulfilled actual needs.
Galbraith voiced a common fear—that marketers link their products to desirable social attributes so that people feel measured by what they buy and guilty or anxious if they don’t measure up. As an example, when the eminent psychologist John Watson joined the J. Walter Thompson (now JWT) advertising agency, he worked on a campaign for Johnson’s baby powder. In a 1925 lecture, he explained how he increased sales of the baby powder by making the mother who did not use it “feel bad, that she was less of a mother, not really a good mother.” [20]
But is advertising really all-powerful? The reality is that 40 percent to 80 percent of all new products fail.
Advertising can’t magically make a product succeed (at least for very long) if it doesn’t have some merit.
Johnson’s baby powder would not still be on store shelves after more than 110 years if it didn’t provide some benefit. As one former advertising agency president noted, “The fact of the matter is we are successful in selling good products and unsuccessful in selling poor ones. In the end, consumer satisfaction, or lack of it, is more powerful than all our tools and ingenuity put together. You know the story: we had the perfect dog food except for one thing—the dog wouldn’t eat it.” [21] The heart of the matter is: does advertising give people what they want, or does it tell them what they should want?
In fact, we can even make the argument (one that advertisers such as high-end stores like Neiman-Marcus, Prada, or Tiffany surely will welcome) that we should want things we can’t afford. According to author James Twitchell, not everyone can buy a $200 cashmere sweater from Saks for their baby—but we can always dream of owning one. He claims that such a collective dream life is important to the
continuing vigor of a culture. In the bigger scheme of things, advertising is a simple reflection of an age-old drive: “Human beings did not suddenly become materialistic. We have always been desirous of things.” [22]
Luxury products are not a bad or wasteful thing (goes this argument) because history shows that one generation’s decadent indulgence becomes the next generation’s bare necessity. Former luxury products that are now in daily use include buttons, window glass, rugs, door handles, pillows, mirrors, combs, and umbrellas, not to mention cars, electric lights, and indoor plumbing. The phenomenon of striving to afford “luxury” is the driving force for a rising standard of living. When we buy a luxury good, we increase the demand for it, which leads companies to produce more of it, ultimately leading to lower prices that make it affordable to the masses. At the same time that each new luxury creates new demand, it also creates the potential for a new industry with new jobs that enable people to afford the new luxuries.
People become individually and collectively richer as they strive to buy new products and create new businesses to make these products. Advertising accelerates this cycle by both stimulating demand and helping suppliers communicate with customers. [23]
Numerous organizations such as Adbusters and The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood work to counteract what they view as the debilitating effects of commercial messages in our culture. [24] Adbusters sponsors numerous initiatives, including Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, intended to discourage rampant commercialism. These efforts, along with biting ads and commercials that lampoon advertising messages, are part of a strategy called culture jamming that aims to disrupt efforts by the corporate world to dominate our cultural landscape.” [25]
Is Adbusters right? Does advertising encourage us to be shallow, or to value material rewards over spiritual ones? The jury is still out on that question, but there is little doubt that ads reinforce the things our society values. Images of happy (and popular) people who drive gas guzzlers and eat junk food surround us.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Because it’s so powerful, advertising can hurt as well as help us. A consumer would have to live in a deep hole not to be affected by the images of “shiny happy people” (to quote from the REM song of the same name) that constantly bombard us. To decide whether advertising causes us to feel insecure about our bodies, engage in self-destructive behaviors, or covet others’ possessions is to raise a chicken-and-egg question that elicits strong feelings on both sides (just ask your professor). Nonetheless, whether they create the problems or merely perpetuate them, advertising practitioners certainly need to remind
themselves (preferably every day) of the power they wield. Hopefully, if you go into the biz, you’ll remember that too.
EXERCISES
a. List and briefly discuss four common objections to advertising and its practice in our society.
b. Briefly trace the history of how advertising has reflected and affected gender roles and racial and ethnic stereotypes in our culture since 1970.
c. Evaluate the practice of behavioral targeting. Take a position on whether or not this practice invades privacy in a positive or negative way. Support your position.
d. We can see materialism as a “drain on society” or a “promoter of prosperity.” Pick one of these views and support your choice with an effective argument.
[1] Quoted in William Leiss, Stephen Kline, and Sut Jhally, Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products and Images of Well-Being (Scarborough, Ontario: Nelson Canada, 1990), 11.
[3] Richard W. Pollay, “The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising,” Journal of Marketing 59 (1986): 18–36, and Morris B. Holbrook, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, What’s Unfair in the
Reflections on Advertising?” Journal of Marketing 51 (1987): 95–103.
[4] Eileen Fischer, “Interview with Denise Fedewa,” Advertising and Society Review 4, no. 4 (2003), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/advertising_and_society_review/toc/asr4.4.html.
[5] Erin White, “Dove ‘Firms’ with Zaftig Models: Unilever Brand Launches European Ads Employing Non-Supermodel Bodies,” Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2004, B3.
[6] Laura Petrecca, “More Ads Star Regular People,” USA Today Online, April 3,
2006,http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2006-04-02-mcdonalds-usat_x.htm(accessed February 13, 2009).
[7] Earl D. Honeycutt, Jr., “Gender Role Portrayals in Japanese Advertising: A Magazine Content Analysis,” Journal of Advertising, March 22, 1998,http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-391205_ITM (accessed February 10, 2009).
[8] James Twitchell, Twenty Ads that Shook the World: The Century’s Most Groundbreaking Advertising and How It Changed Us All (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001).
[9] Jean Grow and Joyce M. Wolburg, “Selling Truth: How Nike’s Advertising to Women Claimed a Contested Reality,” Advertising & Society Review 7, no. 2 (2006): 1.
[10] Vivian Manning-Schaffel, “Metrosexuals: A Well-Groomed Market?”http://brandchannel.com (accessed May 22, 2006).
[11] Advertising Standards Authority, “Taste and Decency—The Depiction of
Men,”http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/focus/background_briefings/Taste+and+
Decency+-+the+depiction+of+men.htm (accessed July 19, 2008); http://www.standyourground.com(accessed July 19, 2008).
[12] Courtney Kane, “Men are Becoming the Ad Target of the Gender Sneer,” New York Times Online, January 28, 2005,http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/business/media/28adco.html (accessed February 13, 2009).
[13] Marty Westerman, “Death of the Frito Bandito,” American Demographics, March 1989, 28; Stuart Elliott,
“Uncle Ben, Board Chairman,” New York Times Online, March 30, 2007 (accessed March 30, 2007); http://www.unclebens.com (accessed February 1, 2009).
[14] Advertising Research Foundation, http://www.thearf.org/assets/multicultural-council (accessed July 19, 2008).
[15] Emily Steel and Vishesh Kumar, “Targeted Ads Raise Privacy Concerns: Pressure Could Imperil Online Strategy Shared by Phone and Cable-TV Firms,” Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2008, B1.
[16] Quoted in Edward C. Baig, Marcia Stepanek, and Neil Gros, “The Internet wants your personal info. What's in it for you?” BusinessWeek, April 5, 1999,http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_14/b3623028.htm (accessed February 1, 2009).
[17] “Consumers Willing to Trade Off Privacy for Electronic Personalization,”http://www.mediapost.com (accessed January 23, 2007).
[18] Jacqui Cheng, “Facebook Reevaluating Beacon after Privacy Outcry, Possible FTC Complaint (Updated),” Ars Tecnica, November 29, 2007, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/11/facebook-reevaluating-beacon-after-privacy- outcry-possible-ftc-complaint.ars (accessed July 19, 2008); Mark Zuckerberg, “Thoughts on Beacon,”
The Facebook Blog, December 5, 2007, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130(accessed July 19, 2008).
[19] John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), as cited in William M. O’Barr,
“What Is Advertising?” Advertising & Society Review 6, no. 3 (2005): 11.
[20] John Watson quoted in Humphrey McQueen, The Essence of Capitalism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2003), 157.
[21] Association of National Advertisers, “The Role of Advertising in
America,”http://www.ana.net/advocacy2/content/advamerica (accessed February 4, 2009).
[22] James Twitchell, Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
[23] James Twitchell, Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
[24] http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org (accessed July 19, 2008);http://www.adbusters.org (accessed July 19, 2008).
[25] Adbusters Media Foundation, “Adbusters,” June 27, 2002, http://www.adbusters.org(accessed July 19, 2008).
3.4 Advertising Regulation: Who Looks Out for Us?
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
After studying this section, students should be able to do the following:
1. List the primary government and industry regulatory agencies that control advertising and the advertising industry.
